Kitty Maryatt
La Prose du Transsibérien Re-creation
Regular Edition
Size of binding
181 x 95 x 35 mm (7.125 x 3.75 x 1.375 in)
Materials
Rives Heavyweight 175 gsm paper, gouache, goat vellum, plexiglass
Edition of 150 copies, plus 30 hors commerce for the underwriters
Description of binding
The regular edition of La Prose du Transsibérien Re-creation is folded and housed in a painted vellum cover exactly as in the original 1913 edition. The four pages are glued together, folded in half, and then folded into an accordion fold. An extension of the top page was glued to the cover in the 1913 book, but in this re-creation the cover is left unattached so the book can be displayed on the wall if wished. The vellum cover is freely hand-painted with acrylics, not done by pochoir. Ninety-three pochoir plates were needed to paint the sixty-six colors in each book. Both the introduction/colophon booklet and the book are placed into the vellum cover and then inserted into the plexiglass slipcase.
Artist bio
Kitty Maryatt received a grant in 1981 to study fine binding with Hugo Peller at Centro del bel Libro in Ascona while she was getting her MFA at UCLA in graphic design (1983). She has studied with many fine binders over the years. She was Director of the Scripps College Press for thirty years which published sixty books that Kitty made with her students, who wrote the texts, made imagery, hand typeset, printed by letterpress, and hand bound editions of fifty to one hundred copies every semester. She has published and bound her own artist books, most recently Figure of Speech. Her books can be found at the Newberry Library, Stanford University, UCLA, the Getty Research Institute, and Harvard University. Since her retirement in June 2016 she has been working full-time on La Prose du Transsiberien Re-Creation.
Price
$3500
Prospective buyers: please contact Kitty Maryatt at twohandspress@gmail.com. Books purchased will be delivered to the purchaser at the end of the touring exhibition.